22/52 2018

Week 22
28 May - 3 June



No chronicle of Jamie's toddlerhood would be complete without mentioning Blippi. We don't watch any television at all, but we do have a few YouTube favourites and Blippi has held the undisputed top spot for the best part of a year now. The gateway was his explainer videos about various large vehicles (bin lorries, excavators, fire engines) but with a four year head start on us there's a LOT of back catalogue. Amongst other things, Blippi is at least 50% responsible for Jamie's grasp of the alphabet, he's demonstrated what to do at a trampoline park, he's shown us how apples are processed from tree to supermarket, and he's driven home rules like always wearing seatbelts. In this picture, Jamie is wearing his Blippi t-shirt and playing with his Blippi action figure (in a skid steer, which is a very Blippi thing to do).

Jamie can recognise his own name written down, but I won't be surprised when the first word he spells is Blippi.

An Engineer's Guide To Cats

While I don't usually regurgitate the b3ta newsletter onto my blog, this was one of those things. Those special things. Those things that just, somehow, wriggle into your consciousness rather than being a two-minute giggle that is forgotten with the next shiny object that rolls past.

The Engineer's Guide To Cats, by Paul Klusman with TJ Wingard, is nominally about cats. Indeed, Paul opens the video with "The purpose of this presentation is to educate engineers, and the general public, about cats."

Nice idea, but really, I think this is the ideal film to educate the general public (and possibly, cats) about engineers. An oft-misunderstood species, I have believed for many years that engineers make superior boyfriend material (although Dilbert may be interested to know that NASA have not hidden me on the moon yet) but I have been unable to explain WHY. What is it about a man with a scientific calculator, a leatherman, and a roll of duct tape, that is attractive?

I still can't explain it properly in actual words. Could it be the intelligence? The single-minded devotion? The attention to detail? The defeat of self-consciousness? I don't know. But I defy any woman to watch these two play with their cats and not melt a little bit inside. That's what it is about engineers.

Tis The Season

I love Christmas.

Some people get quite upset about that. There's the religious people, who think that as I don't believe the son of God was born on December 25th, two-thousand-odd years ago, I should just butt out of their meaningful celebration. Then there's the anti-religious people, who think that if I am rejecting Christianity then I should reject the entirety of Christmas because blah perpetuating false ideas wibble consumerism et cetera.

I respect both viewpoints (although I realise the tone of the preceding paragraph my put that into some doubt), and as such, I don't mind whether any of the people I know - or any of the people I don't know - spend their December in church praising their Lord and feeling marvellously spiritual, or in their determinedly undecorated houses ignoring the whole caboodle as best they can and burning any Christmas cards that darken their doormat.

But for me, Christmas is largely about the things in the coca-cola advert. Colour and light at the dark time of year. A little bit of magic, even if you know how it was done. Family and friends. Uplifting mood. And, dare I say it, a bit of excess - plenty to eat, plenty to drink, and giving and recieving (with thoughtfulness and good intentions and time and effort and consideration) gifts, including things that perhaps the recipient wouldn't have bought for themselves on their own (ok that's not in the advert, but Father Christmas is, and that's what he represents. To me).

Occasionally I wonder if that kind of thing - the Coca-Cola Christmas - isn't just the next natural progression of the mid-winter celebration/event/ceremony/whatever that humans do have a tendency to do for the last couple of thousand years. Personally, I'm not a Christian or a Muslim or a Druid or a Wiccan or a Pagan or anything else, I think the closest you'd get to classifying me is Apathetic Agnostic. I'm not even a huge consumerismist. But I love the Christmas celebrations.

Warning: There may be more Christmas-based posts to follow.

No worries

With the DLA crud dealt with, I've been just taking it easy, relaxing, trying to recoup some energy, that sort of thing. You remember I said it's been like dealing with an exam? Well, this is that big knackered empty feeling afterwards except the knackered part is multiplied by "I have long-term lurgy and have been overdoing it".

So there's been lots of blank time, just lying still and not thinking about anything at all. And there's been a lot of gently vegetating in front of the computer. Well, in the vicinity of the computer. In fact I've spent a good deal of time gazing at the patterns of light on a can of furniture polish that's on my desk. And watching my Sunshine Buddy - very soothing.

I've been particularly enjoying watching a lot of stuff on youtube by Tripod, a trio of comedy musicians from Australia. Particular favourites include Gonna Make You Happy for all the other Girlfriends of Geeks out there (you have to listen at least until 1:08, the whole thing is 3:52), Ghost Ship which is just very silly indeed, or this relaxing little bit of politics.

Those who know me will not be surprised to hear that my favourite is Scod, the one with the dark hair and glasses. Me and geeks with dark hair and glasses, it's just this thing and there seems to be very little I can do about it. Don't worry though Steve, you don't need to learn guitar.

Knittingwise, I've got my next project lined up - a hat for Sister Dearest - and she has picked a pattern and told me what colour she wants. I've got the needles and I'm just waiting on the wool. For some crazy reason, charcoal-coloured 100% merino wool yarn is tricky to get hold of in June. She wants black flowers embroidered on it. So if anyone has a handy end-of-a-ball of black yarn in their stash that they want rid of, I have a use for it. Also, I would like to flag my utter amazement at the knitting dedication of Dominocat.

Finally, it just wouldn't be a Saturday if I hadn't recieved some rubbish from the Department of Work and Pensions that requires action or query but that I won't be able to do anything about until Monday morning.

Luckily it's not a "worry" thing. There's a letter from the DLA department reminding me that I had said I had additional information to submit for my reconsideration and that if this is the case, I must post it to them ASAP (hurrah!) and one from I'm not sure what department, but not DLA, that starts with "thank you for informing us of your recent change in circumstance" which, ???!?!? because I haven't actually informed them of any changes, being as how nothing has, you know, CHANGED as yet. I hope it's just a pre-emptive thing because my original award of DLA expires on August 8th. If it is, that's a relief, because it means there was actually a department that were on the ball and I don't have to go see them on August 7th and say "ummmm...", but it is always as well to check these things, and write down the name of the person who explains it to you.

The weather seems to have given me a bit of a knock so I haven't been about too much. I've been spending far more time than is healthy lying down, wide awake, feverish and full of painkillers, with my mind wandering.

The chain of thought started with Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, which was dramatised on SkyOne last Christmas and which I recently bought on DVD. From there we went to the Coca-Cola Christmas adverts.

I also started thinking about the type of adverts that take a well-known song, and then put their own lyrics on it, like this Weetabix advert.

The next stage was how in school, up until I was about 13, we had to sing hymns in assembly each day, as well as any amount of carol concerts. Lots of songs we sang had "alternative" lyrics. "While sheperds washed their socks by night", and "we three kings of orient are trying to light a rubber cigar", "good king Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen, a snowball hit him on the snout and made it all uneven" and hundreds of others I'm sure you can remember.

And from THERE, final leap, I fell into a sort of half-sleep full of people in a church. A priest at the front burbling a sermon, congregation variously dozing, or fidgeting, or looking disapprovingly at those who were dozing or fidgeting. The bit where the priest says something and the congregation answer in a zombie monotone.
"May the Lord be with you"
"A n d a l s o w i t h y o u"
"Let us lift up our hearts"
"w e l i f t t h e m u p t o t h e L o r d"
(Catholic primary school, this crud is etched on my brain)
The organ plays a chord, people cough and shuffle to their feet. Upon which they launch into This Bloody Frosties Advert. Complete with jumping up and down.

My mind scares me sometimes.


Oh, and as this post has far too many YouTube links in it already, I may as well stick in another one. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Nintendo Opera.

Code Monkey

I've been digging through old emails, bookmarks, etc, and rediscovered this song:


Code Monkey!
Song by Jonathan Coulton, Video by Mike Spiff Booth.

I love this song. Liked some of his other stuff too. Have a looksee.


edited a minute after posting to add the creators' names. Oops.